Recap: Pope Francis’ impassioned speech to Congress on immigration, climate change and war

September 24, 2015, 9:36 AM ET

Reuters

Read a recap of MarketWatch’s live blog of Pope Francis’ historic speech to Congress. The Argentine-born Francis was the first pontiff to address a joint meeting of Congress, and his speech included a plea to fight climate change; a defense of the traditional family; and an urgency about treating immigrants with compassion.

Hello and welcome to the live blog. The pope’s speech is due to begin at 10 a.m. He arrived at the Capitol at about 9:15 a.m., and went right to a meeting with House Speaker John Boehner. The Ohio Republican, a Catholic, invited the pope to speak back in March 2014. The Vatican accepted in February of this year.

Francis arrived in the U.S. on Tuesday, and has had a packed schedule that has so far included meeting with President Obama and canonizing 18th-century Franciscan missionary Junipero Serra. He hasn’t shied away from controversial topics, including climate change – the subject that has caused at least one House Republican to say he’ll boycott the speech today.

The pope is coming to Congress with Democrats and Republicans bitterly divided over government funding. The two sides haven’t been able to agree on funding for the fiscal year that starts a week from today, and without a stopgap spending bill, the federal government will partially shut down. A key issue dividing the parties is abortion, specifically funding for Planned Parenthood. Conservatives want to deny any federal money to the group.

At least one Republican hopes that Francis uses his address today to reiterate the Catholic Church’s antiabortion position. “That’s a position of the Roman Catholic Church that’s really unassailable and I’m hopeful that that position will be reiterated from the floor of Congress next week,” Rep. Steve King of Iowa told Politico last week.

The pope says he wants to address all Americans through his speech to Congress, and dialogue with the thousands of men and women who do “an honest day’s work.” His line about their sustaining the life of society gets big applause.

The pope is wading strongly into the immigration debate here, saying thousands of people are “led to travel north” in search of a better life.

That’s obviously a reference to Latin American migrants — and a plea to the lawmakers he’s speaking to to treat them with compassion. He quotes the famous line from Matthew: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

The pope is going, not unexpectedly, full pacifist. He’s slamming arms-sellers. “Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society? Sadly, the answer, as we all know, is simply for money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood.”

The pope managed to press lots of buttons in his speech: urging action on climate change (which Republicans disagree with him on) and making his opposition to abortion clear (which sets him apart from many Democrats).